Thinking of getting a 4.6 how reliable are the mod motors?

If you are still looking I would suggest to consider the 99-01 Cobra or the 03-04 Mach 1. You might find a good 99-01 Cobra at a good price as for the Mach1 well they are getting harder to find and the prices are going up. My 4.6 is great I just wish I would have gone w/a 4v.

4v>2v in many ways but you cant go wrong with a 2v

I beat mine everyday bout to go do it now and nothin ever breaks and when i am just replacing things for routine maitenance or upgrading they are not that hard to work on.

Just about everyone on here posted on the thread a while back about how hard they drive their stang and it looked pretty good to me. You can pick one up for like 15gs with low mileage and they last. There are some on this 4.6 board with over 100k and still going strong and addings mods.

Overall I think they are great cars and you do not have to spend a week to tune them up like the 5.7s me and my friend just put wires and plugs in his 94 Z28 wow what a PITA.

I have not had any issues with any 4.6 stang I have owned nor has any of my friends with theirs. None have 200K on the clock but they are a nice solid car.

I make 260 to the wheels and still get 24-25 mpg.

The Shape said:

Cool, any common problems with these models? I have read a few threads about idle problems from the IAC , which I am used to with the 5.0 anyway so no suprise there. What about the cracking intakes? Was that just certain years or what?

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The manifold problem was mainly with the 96-98 cars. I had a 98 & it happened to me. The 99-04 manifolds are fine. You will want to be careful with the 99-01 cars though. They seem to have had a problem with spitting spark plugs out of the motors.

I have not heard of any problems with the 02-04 cars, I currently have an 02 GT and it has been a sweetheart. I picked it up through a friend at a local Ford dealer for $15k. It is loaded & immaculate, and it only had 15,000 miles on it.

My freind accidently threw mine in reverse at 40, and it's fine. Auto transmissions are strong.

Mine has 108k on it, and I beat on it daily. But I beat it in a carefull way. Not hitting the rev limiter ( if there even is one have'nt come close to hitting it), powershifting in 99-01 GT's is bad, tranny's suppposedly arent as good as 02-04, however i've driven both, dont see a difference. Put a good shifter on it and your ok. Anyways, I have alot of miles, and, the only thing bad about my car that I can say is, I hear a little bit of lifter noise or something, after it's been sitting(cold start). Not nearly as bad when it's warm out, go's away after about 2 minutes, and I use a K&N filter with royal purple, so it's def a problem but not one that i'm concerned about.

My opinion 4.6 2V is as good as any V8, except the 4V lol. They're good, and, I cant even imagine how long either of them would last if they were never ever beaten, just driven like an old lady. I'd say 300k no problem. As they've said above, I think...the GT's dont have forged internals, but, they're not exactly weak as hell either, just not as good at holding up to power adders. A stock GT is fine, and should last a very long time with proper maintenence. This from much experience. As far as 5.0's, I had 5 total, only 1 actually broke, in the bottom end, it had 179k on it, it was winter, a friend asked me to take him for a ride, he'd never been in a stang, or any fast car actually, so, I said sure. I made the mistake of not letting it warm up very much, maybe 3-4 minutes, went half way down the block and stomped on it in first gear, and snap, the crank in two pieces. When we took the pan off after lifting the front end way up, at teh shop, the damage was unreal, and only about a quart of oil was in it. It broke because I was a lazy ass who didnt check my oil, or let it warm up. IMO 5.0's are better, but 4.6 has better technology, ohc, I much prefer ohc to ohv. I type too much....

99-01 Cobra IMHO is defonantly better than any 99+ GT, however, the 03-04 Cobra's are absolutly sick. I've driven two, and......I cannot stress how much fun they are, sooo fast, and stock! I'd say, if you're not the type to mod a car, the newer cobra is best, it's fast enough stock to beat most any car, except another one modded LOL. If you "want" to do lotsa addy's, i'd go with the older cobra, and lastly a 99+ GT.

The 4.6 is great until you start adding boost or nitrous... but stock I would say its crazy reliable. I'd bet that there is some cop forum out there that could testify how much they can be beaten on before crapping out.

QuickCapri83 said:

99-01 Cobra IMHO is defonantly better than any 99+ GT

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defonantly?

the modulars have been great, we don't have many problems with them at all.

look at how hard cabbies and cops drive their cars without blowing the engines. I think that is a true testament to the reliability of the 4.6

stangGT97 said:

look at how hard cabbies and cops drive their cars without blowing the engines. I think that is a true testament to the reliability of the 4.6

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werd

The cops do put their vehicles through some abuse. We have a fleet contract with the local counties police vehicles at my dealership and at around 100k miles those crown vics are either burning a lot of oil or have bearing problems. The 4.6 2vs are pretty tough but they can't handle what these cops put them through. Now when a normal person owns one its not uncommon to see a 4.6 town car with 170k miles on it still running fine.

hi guys , new to the forum and the mustang world , just purchased 96 gt convertible ( with 4.6 of course ). don't know how relevant this is but i have two trucks with 4.6's , a 98 e150 with 250,000 kilometers and a 200 f150 with 233,000 k's , both are still running strong and i expect they will for quite some time. the e 150 uses a litre of oil every change and has since i bought it ( around 107 k ) I don't think that is that unusual and again it hasn't gotten worse. my understanding from my cousin who is a ford mechanic is that these are excellent motors that they have very few problems . hope this helps.

i know some guys who drive people in 4.6 town cars i saw one with over 200K and it ran well. most ive seen have 120k-170k and run great.

yeah, cops tear the crap out of these cars. I actually have some videos of a 2002 crown vic being put through some really hard braking and a pursuit course if any of you are interested...i was sitting in the passengers seat with my cell phone. it was a BLAST!

I think for a DD, if you leave it stock. She will be like the energizer bunny...

They are a fine motor, but I don't see them lasting 200k+ miles.

do bad engines really exsist?